In
January 1958, the Oriental Institute Nippur Expedition discovered a
door socket (exc. no. 6N-351) in the main gate of Inanna’s Parthian
level temple (L II, locus SB 53, see Civil 1989: 60). It was recognized
to have been used formerly as a grinding stone, and turned out to have
originally been the pedestal of a diorite statue, bearing the remains
of a dedicatory inscription of Š&umacr;-Suen (RIME 3/2.1.4.7, foll.
Frayne
1997). Some 44 years later, a piece of this socle has been offered for
sale–and has been sold–at a London auction. This short paper aims to
demonstrate the misfortune of this extraordinary object.

The present author is especially indebted to John Russell for kindly
providing the colour original of the image published in his book and a
permission to publish it. The collegial help of an unnamed specialist
of Bonhams, who was kind enough to send a high-resolution original of
the photo published in the auction catalogue, is gratefully
acknowledged. Both images are included in the composite one which is
made available at CDLI.

Fig. 1: 6N-351 (Š&umacr;-Suen 7)

The diorite pedestal under discussion is unique for it offers a rare
example of inscriptions, which are known both from the original
statues, and from clay tablets copied in ancient times (cf. Sallaberger
1999: 12715, 169 and Radner 2005: 106-107, 2441225).
Several
statues–especially Old Akkadian ones–are known to us only from
descriptions written by Old Babylonian scribes, who copied the
inscriptions, sometimes giving their exact location on the statue as
well (cf. Edzard 1980: 64-65, Braun-Holzinger 1991: 281-290, Radner
2005: 244-250 and Hallo 2006: 188-191). As for the Š&umacr;-Suen 7
inscription, it has been preserved on a Nippur tablet (see Frayne
1997:
314 with earlier literature, add Krebernik apud Attinger 2002: 130, 134
and Wilcke 2002: 295-296), containing textual parts of Š&umacr;-Suen’s other
statues (see most recently Suter 2010: 329-330) as well. From the
colophons in this text, we learn that beside the inscription on the
socle (mu sar-ra ki-gal), another one was situated on the statue’s
right shoulder, or perhaps the right side of his back (mu sar-ra
zag-zi-da-ni, cf. Braun-Holzinger 1991: 290 and Radner 2005: 118611),
which is, of course, not preserved. When archaeologists discovered it,
three parts of the socle inscription were still extant, namely lines
2-3 (with Civil 1989: 60, contrary to Frayne 1997: 314, cf. also
Neumann 1992: 389+24 and Wilcke 2002: 295), 11-19, and
20-22, the
latter two parts being divided by the figure’s left foot.

Although the socle itself was found as early as 1958, it remained
unpublished for several decades. It was Miguel Civil (1989: 60-61, 64)
who edited the text and published a photograph of it (see also
Braun-Holzinger 1991: 288 Abb. 4), which appears to have been taken at
the excavation site. Its later whereabouts are not known (cf.
Braun-Holzinger 1991: 275, Frayne 1997: 314, Braun-Holzinger 2007:
138). Surprisingly, it was found and photographed by John Russell
(1998: 206 and 241, no. 231) in a storehouse at Nineveh in 1989,
probably in May (pers. comm. 05.10.2013). Alongside with it he also
found several other artefacts of varied origins, a number of which he
recognized later as they appeared on the antiquities market between
1989 and 1998 (Russell 1998: 240-241).

The next appearance of the object under discussion is dated to as late
as the 7th November 2002, when a piece of this pedestal–bearing lines
11-19 only–was offered for sale at a Bonhams auction in Knightsbridge
(London), listed as no. 206. To judge by the new damage visible on the
new photograph (Bonhams 2002: 72-73), the looters or dealers tried to
cut out the inscribed part with a chisel but finally used a
circular saw. This practice was widely applied over the past two
decades, especially in the case of stamped clay bricks, because of
their relatively small inscriptions in relation to their original
measurements (see Brodie 2011: 125-126 on the so-called Nebuchadnezzar
Larsa bricks with clear saw marks).

In the Bonhams catalogue, the following description of this object was
given:

A section of black stone inscribed in Sumerian
Third Dynasty of Ur, circa 2038-2029 B.C.
Containing nine fully or partly preserved lines of a royal text of Shu
Sin, fourth king of the Third Dynasty of Ur, translating, ']...[...] the
monthly... in the temple of Enlil and Ninlil, Shu-Sin, beloved of Enlil,
the king whom Enlil chose as the beloved one of his heard [.....', 9¼ x
5¼in. (23 x 13.5cm.), in a presentation box with gold embossed spine
(Bonhams 2002: 72)

The estimated value was £4,000-6,000; the hammer price went as high as
£7,500. As usual, the names of neither the seller nor the buyer have
been made public. According to the auction catalogue, the object was
“formerly in a European private collection” (Bonhams 2002: 72), more
specifically, in the possession of an “UK collector” (courtesy of a
Bonhams specialist, pers. comm. 05.12.2012). To judge by the
translation, the one who made the description appears not to have been
aware of its real provenance, and also not to have known the Š&umacr;-Suen 7
inscription (cf. lines 11-12, which have been left untranslated),
although the Nippur copy’s corresponding part was published well before.

To draw conclusions, it seems reasonable to suppose that the pedestal
was originally left in some Iraqi museum or excavation building–note
that even Civil (1989: 60) took measurements from the photograph–from
which it was brought to Nineveh, and after that stolen and
smuggled to Europe. In fact, it appears never to have been given an
accession number, and is commonly referred to by excavation number.
Consequently, it is particularly difficult to determine the exact date
of the theft. The object is not referred to in any official inventory
of missing artefacts, compiled either after the First or after the
Second Gulf War. Most probably it was stolen from the Nineveh
storehouse sometime in the early 1990s.

Whenever it occurred, the sale could have been stopped by enforcing the
international laws protecting cultural heritage (see Brodie 2008:
41-43, 48-49 and 2011: 117-120), or failing all else, the 1970 UNESCO
Convention on the Means of Prohibiting and Preventing the Illicit
Import, Export and Transfer of Ownership of Cultural Property, which was accepted by the UK on the 1st August 2002 (see UNESCO
homepage), i.e., three months before the auction.

Although the first steps in the destruction of Š&umacr;-Suen’s statue took place in antiquity, the piece of the socle remained almost
intact until its theft from an Iraqi storage facility. Needless to say,
it was the ever increasing demand for antiquities which facilitated
this event and, though indirectly, also the further destruction of a
unique piece of cultural heritage. More rigorous inquiries by the auction house, including consultation with Assyriologists familiar with the corpus of Sumerian royal inscriptions, might have prevented this sale, which resulted in a substantial profit for the seller, thus facilitating similar events for the future. Now it is our responsibility to prevent them.